Tag Archives: Aquinas

Aquinas’ definition of law is very brief and straight-forward. Most lawyers and even college students will at least have heard tell of it. It reads: “Law is an ordination of reason, by the proper authority, for the common good, and promulgated.” Many things are stated and implied in this brief, compact sentence.When each of these four elements of the definition…

“We see that every city is some sort of community, and that every community is constituted for the sake of some good, since everyone does everything for the sake of what seems good” (Politics, 1.1.1252a). Aristotle famously described humans as political animals. What he meant by that was that humans are, by their nature, social creatures. Community was a natural…

Thus far we have looked at three prominent thinkers who have offered us some ways to reform the multiversity so it can become an institution that pursues truth: Plato’s idea of periagoge, Aristotle’s concept of phronesis, and Augustine’s understanding of amare. When we reach Aquinas, we find that the medieval university has managed to preserve the classical understanding of education,…

History: Truth and BeingThe work of Saint Thomas (1225-1274) absorbed his life in the literal sense in that he died from exhaustion before he reached the age of fifty. And it absorbed his life in the existential sense in that the work has become the expression of…

The Ethiopian Campaign and French Political Thought. Yves R. Simon with Anthony O. Simon, ed., and Robert Royal, trans. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009.

In October 1935, the Italian army invaded Ethiopia (then called Abyssinia) and by the following May had control of the country, which now linked and thus unified Italy’s other African possessions. The occupation…

The humanists may well be right if they do not follow the classical philosophers in developing principles based on the bios theoretikos, or Christian thinkers into a conception of politics orientated toward the sanctification of life. But this question can be answered only through a closer study of their argument. I shall proceed by analysing in some detail their position…